


Rent

by shalako



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Archie has no idea, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gold is a former sex worker, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Past Rape, Past Sex Work, Slow Burn, mentions of child abuse, mentions of sexual abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-08
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-04-25 10:15:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 19
Words: 14,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4956439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shalako/pseuds/shalako
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Archie and Mr. Gold have just started their relationship when a criminal of the worst type starts terrorizing Storybrooke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

“What’s your first name?”

It’s the first real personal question Archie ever asks him -- though it’s not the first time that he’s asked it. The first time -- on their first date -- Gold never answered, and Archie assumed the other man just didn't hear him. Archie was used to that by now; he had a soft voice, a calming, soothing voice, and it wasn’t always loud enough to pierce somebody’s thoughts. He let it go.

The second time he asked, it was like the words jumped out of his mouth of their own volition in the middle of a conversation, and he’d seen Gold’s eyes flicker toward him, seen the momentary displeasure on his face before Gold went on with what he was saying, ignoring Archie completely in favor of his interrupted sentence. When he’d finished speaking, Archie had responded, too embarrassed to ask again, and soon enough the question was forgotten.

This time, Archie was going to get an answer. It was dark outside, peaceful, calm. Summer in Storybrooke could be brisk or it could be humid, and on nights like these people could prepare for either and be comfortable in both. They sat outside, on Archie’s back porch, with their legs touching and the crickets chirping -- and Archie reached over, his fingers brushing Gold’s hand, and asked his question in the quiet summer calm.

“What’s your first name?”

Gold went still. His lips pursed a little; a beat passed and he pulled his hand away from Archie’s, used it instead to tug his shirtsleeves down a little farther, covering his wrists. It was a signal of discomfort, Archie recognized, and he was instantly more uncomfortable himself for realizing that.

“I-I mean, you don’t have to really tell me,” he said quickly, fumbling out the words. “If you don’t want to.”

Gold’s head inclined slightly, a subtle nod. “I don’t,” he said. His voice was crisp. Unaffected.

“Oh,” said Archie. His neck was warm from a blush and he turned his gaze away, facing the trees on the edge of his yard. “OK.”

A normal person might apologize to him for being so blunt, even if it was only a cursory ‘sorry’. Gold didn’t say anything. Not for at least two minutes, when Archie’s attention was already absorbed once more in the sound of chirping crickets.

“I believe the town theory,” said Mr. Gold with the hint of sarcasm in his voice, “is that my first name is Mister, if that suffices for you.”

“Not quite,” Archie said, smiling. He saw something pass across Gold’s face -- something humorous, something wistful, something sad -- and then the other man let Archie grab his hand again, more firmly this time, and they let the silence take over again.

Archie looked up at the sky as the stars came out and wondered how long, in some capacity or another, he had known Mr. Gold. It seemed like forever -- an eternity of paying rent, of pawnshop visits, of greetings on the street. One would think, in so many years -- and in the few months or so that they’d had this, whatever this was -- that he would learn the man’s first name.

But Gold was a private man, and if he didn’t want to share, well …

Archie wouldn’t press him.

 

 


	2. Two

It was still springtime in Storybrooke when they started dating -- though Archie wasn’t sure if ‘dating’ was the proper word. It seemed simultaneously too small and too large a term. If anything, what they had was a decidedly un-platonic, very secret friendship.

In the mornings, Archie took Pongo for a walk. He walked down the streets of Storybrooke and he crossed the road at the stoplight at 7:10 am, the same moment that Mr. Gold crossed the street from the opposite side on the way to his pawnshop. Sometimes they nodded to each other (Archie always smiled), sometimes Archie said ‘Good morning’ (Mr. Gold always scowled), and sometimes they said nothing at all.

Then one day when they were passing each other -- when the sky was grey from clouds but the sun was somehow still bright enough to make Mr. Gold squint -- their daily greeting was disrupted. “Good mAAAARGH!” Archie said, and instead of nodding or scowling back, as he would normally do, Mr. Gold landed on the ground with a thud, his back slamming against the pavement and a full-grown, 100-pound dalmatian sitting on his chest.

Why Pongo chose that day to jump, Archie would never know, but in that moment he could feel his world falling apart, his future flashing before his eyes. He saw Mr. Gold being taken away to the hospital with three broken ribs and a concussion, blood flowing from his skull. He saw the police showing up in SWAT suits, beating a crazed and rabid Pongo to the ground. He saw a battered Mr. Gold pointing Pongo out in a police line-up, saw Pongo imprisoned on Death Row, his fur clipped and his skin stained with new tattoos, saw the dauntless dalmatian with prison-hardened eyes being led into the gas chamber without a chance to say goodbye.

He blinked, came back to the present, and regained his senses just in time to watch a grumbling Mr. Gold shove Pongo away.

“Oh God,” said Archie, scrambling forward. He put himself between Mr. Gold and Pongo, who was trying desperately to lick the pawnbroker’s face. “Mr. Gold, I’m so sorry, he’s never done that before--”

Mr. Gold reached for his cane. Archie reached for it too, trying to be helpful, but he only succeeded in kicking it farther away and allowing Pongo a new opening to Mr. Gold’s face.

“Hopper,” said Gold in a strained voice as Archie finally retrieved his cane and helped the other man up, “please control your animal.”

“Sorry,” said Archie. He latched onto Pongo’s collar and then the dog’s leash, pulling him back. “He’s really never done that before, I don’t know what came over him.” He was vaguely aware that the people on either side of the street had all stopped and were watching them. He was also acutely aware that there were loose bits of gravel all over Mr. Gold’s once-pristine suit, which was just a tragedy. When Gold walked past him, his face set in a neutral mask, Archie didn’t even think about it before he re-routed his entire morning and followed the pawnbroker to his shop, chattering nervously all the while.

“He’s normally a very _good_ dog, really -- he’s always gentle with kids, uh, with everybody, really. I even bring him to the office with me, you know, because people like to pet him, and he’s always very sweet. He’s never jumped on anyone before, I --”

Gold ducked into his shop, the door swinging shut behind him so fast that Archie barely made it in. Archie noticed the subtle grimace on Gold’s face and chose to ignore it -- the two of them came to a stop on either side of the counter, Gold finally facing Archie, his palms spread out on the glass counter and, to Archie’s chagrin, slightly scraped from the pavement.

“Are you here to purchase something, or did you just come to blather?” Gold asked. Pongo whined, ignored by both men.

“Um,” said Archie, “well, I guess I just came to apologize.”

Gold raised an eyebrow. “You don’t suppose your previous fifteen apologies count?”

Archie just flushed. He leaned over -- an awkward moment born from an awkward situation -- and brushed some of the gravel off Mr. Gold’s arm. The pawnbroker froze for a moment, his eyes sharp and intense on Archie’s face, and then the therapist backed away and things went back to normal.

“I’ll pay for the dry-cleaning,” he offered, gesturing to Mr. Gold’s suit. The other man didn’t answer for a moment.

“I think I can afford it a bit better than you can,” he said finally, and Archie didn’t argue.

“Still, though,” he said, “I’d like to make it up to you, if I can. I’ll get you some coffee, or -- or -- or anything, really, so long as I know you’re not gonna raise my rent.”

That last bit, meant as a joke, came out far too nervous-sounding for Archie’s ears. Gold’s expression didn’t change.

“I’m not really interested,” he said flatly, and opened the inventory that sat on the counter before him, effectively dismissing Archie.

“Right,” said the therapist, mouth dry. “Well. Um, have a nice day.”

Mr. Gold didn’t respond, eyes hooded and fixed on the book.

* * *

Archie brought him coffee anyway.

 

 


	3. Three

“Dr. Hopper,” Gold greeted when Archie entered the pawnshop. “How can I help you?”

Archie didn’t respond, letting the door shut behind him as he made his way across the pawnshop floor and set a styrofoam cup down before Gold, the other cup remaining in his hand.

“Coffee,” said Archie. He felt a grin spread over his face and hoped it looked charmingly cool -- but guessing from the look on Gold’s face, it came across as more goofy than anything. “I asked Ruby to make it the way you liked it. But, uh, she said she didn’t know, so I just got it black.”

Gold, whose fingers had been slowly inching toward the cup, froze and looked at Archie. He blinked a few times.

“Why on Earth would plain black coffee be your first guess for anyone’s favorite?” he asked, but the tone of his voice was more baffled than annoyed. Archie rolled his shoulders in a small shrug, his smile somehow not faltering in the slightest.

“Well, I mean -- you don’t really seem like the type for cream and sugar,” he said.

With a small shrug of his own -- neither a confirmation nor a denial -- Gold took the cup and sipped it, his lip twitching at the bitterness.

“I suppose this is your apology for this morning,” he said. Archie just nodded, now leaning on the counter as he got more comfortable and drank his own coffee, which may or may not have actually been hot chocolate.

“You could say that,” he said. “I’m sorry I got your order wrong.”

“It’s no matter,” Gold said. “I’d be far more perturbed if you got it right.”

Archie snorted, and his eyes started to roam over the pawnshop as silence fell, comfortable and uninterrupted. He’d only been in the shop once or twice before, and he’d always been a little fascinated with it (or, more accurately, the man who ran it). He examined the paintings on the walls, the old rowboats and bikes hanging from the ceilings, the knick-knacks crowding the shelves, and he wondered about the type of people who’d owned those things and sold them, wondered about the type of man who made a living buying and re-selling other people’s used things.

“You don’t have to stay,” said Mr. Gold suddenly, and it took Archie a moment to swim out of his thoughts and comprehend the words.

“What?” he asked. Gold gestured to the coffee.

“You brought your payment. Held up your end of the deal, so to speak. You can go.”

“Oh,” said Archie, startled. He looked at his watch, calculating the minutes in his head. “Well, I mean, I don’t have another appointment for a while, so I’m in no big hurry.” He glanced back up, smiling warmly at Mr. Gold’s inscrutable face. “Besides, coffee’s no good if you don’t have company.”

Gold just hummed flatly, his eyes blank, and took another drink. Archie mimicked him, pretending his hot chocolate was bitter and black instead of soothingly warm and smooth.

“So,” he said, “a pawnshop. That’s a pretty interesting business to get into, isn’t it? What made you decide to do that?”

“I’m not very interested in talking about me,” said Gold. Archie bobbed his head.

“OK, that’s fair. Do you wanna hear about _me_?”

Gold gave him a strange look, like he wasn’t sure whether Archie was real or not. Archie took that as a yes.

“Well, I grew up in New York,” Archie said, letting his eyes slide up to the ceiling as he remembered. “I sorta lived on my own most of the time. I mean, I lived with my parents, but they weren’t really, you know … a mom and dad. They were these, uh, _petty criminals_ , I guess would be the best word. Con-men.” He smiled; Mr. Gold was still giving him that strange look, and he was choosing to ignore it. “They used to send me out to beg for money when I was little, so when I got older I felt like I needed to give back to the world, for all the times I tricked people and took their money, or helped my parents do it. And that’s why I became a therapist.”

There was a long pause. Gold’s eyes flickered away and he sipped his coffee. When he finally set it back down, it was empty, just like Archie’s hot chocolate.

“I run a pawnshop,” Gold said, “because I like to watch people give up the things they love.”

He made eye contact with Archie, unflinching, his face perfectly blank. It was such a baldy uncaring, nearly sadistic statement that it would have shut down any other person’s attempt at friendship. Being trained to recognize attempts at pushing others away, Archie didn’t blink an eye.

“Well, I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said brightly, patting Gold on the shoulder. The other man narrowed his eyes at him. “Have a nice day, Mr. Gold.”

He left the shop without getting a single word in reply.


	4. Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> RhineGold gave me kudos. Y'all idk if you remember the beginning of this fandom like I do, but RhineGold was my hurt/comfort GOD. Half my bookmarks are old RhineGold fics that never got finished lmao

Archie came back the next day with one hot chocolate (his) and one coffee, with a spoonful of sugar added (Gold’s). Gold’s mouth still twitched at the bitterness, but he refused to tell Archie how he preferred it. He seemed too surprised at the other man’s presence to make any complaints at all.

This time, Archie asked questions ("So where are you from?") and Gold avoided answering them ("Here and there") until their coffee was gone and Archie, looking regretfully at his watch, announced that he had an appointment to make.

“See you tomorrow,” he said as he left. He got no answer -- Gold just watched him go, his eyes hooded and grim.

On the third day, in the morning when he crossed paths with Mr. Gold, he saw the other man holding a cup of coffee in one hand, and Mr. Gold made eye contact with him pointedly, as if to show that no further coffee breaks were needed. Archie showed up at lunchtime anyway, two coffees in hand, and made his way to the backroom where Gold was sitting at his desk, examining the antique silverware someone had just brought in. His expression when he saw Archie was a satisfying mix of exasperation and acceptance.

“Two sugars this time,” Archie told him, handing him the coffee. Gold took it with an unconvincing glare and Archie backed away, plopping down on the old couch in the corner. Silence reigned as Gold seemed more determined to ignore him than ever before.

“You know,” said Archie, a grin playing 'round his lips, “you spend an awful lot of energy trying to make people go away.”

Gold glanced up at him, eyebrows raised. “People spend an awful lot of energy doing the same to me,” he said.

“ _Some_ of them,” Archie agreed, with a pointed look to the coffee on Gold’s desk.  “Not all.”

“Not everyone is smart enough to leave well enough alone,” Gold replied. Archie frowned -- the more clinical side of his brain was doing its form of daydreaming, making a list of terms like ‘low self-esteem’ and ‘self-isolation.’ Anything that might explain Gold's reluctance to make friends. But eventually the silence became too heavy and Archie pushed those thoughts away -- friends don’t psycho-analyze friends.

“How’s the coffee?” he asked instead.

“Bitter,” said Gold, nose wrinkling. Archie could feel his own face creasing in dismay.

“Aw, come on, really? I put _two_ _sugars_ in there!”

Gold just shrugged, but he didn’t stop drinking the coffee. There was a hint of a smile (or maybe a smirk) just visible over the edge of the cup. But when he put the coffee down again, his face was perfectly composed

“You don’t have to keep visiting me,” he said, eyes flickering away from Archie's face. “I rather think you’ve paid your debt in full by now. I didn’t even end up dry-cleaning the suit.”

Archie took the empty cups, placing one inside the other to carry them better, until he could find a trashcan. “I like having coffee with you,” he said simply. He kept his face carefully under control in an attempt to negate the effects of his tomato-red blush. “What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing, of course,” said Gold, his voice too carefully neutral.

“Well,” said Archie, shifting from foot to foot, “then, uh, I guess there’s nothing else to say.”

He smiled, hoping it looked more confident than it felt. Gold didn’t smile back, but his face wasn’t blank, at least. He was watching Archie with a look of blatant confusion, like something very big in the universe had gotten out of step and Gold was struggling to play catch-up with it, trying hard to figure out exactly what had gone wrong.

“Give me a hint, then,” said Archie, “before I go. It’s not black, and it’s not one sugar, and it’s not _two_ sugars. So what is it? Or do I have to keep guessing ‘till I get it right?”

He waited for an answer. A thin smile crossed Gold’s face.

“Keep guessing,” he said.

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

It went from a friendly acquaintanceship to a friendship the first time they went for a walk together, when Archie caught a glimpse of Gold’s hair on a pathway in the woods and he hurried to catch up, Pongo straining at the leash. That was a clear marking point -- every instance before that had seen Archie’s attempts at friendliness met with cold resistance, and every instance after that walk in the woods saw his attempts matched, in Gold’s own antisocial way.

The transition from friendship to -- well, something else, was harder to pin down. It was almost certainly a different moment for both of them. For Gold, immensely private, with little to no friends, the turning point was probably something as simple as the first time he accepted Archie’s invitations over for dinner. For Archie, there seemed like a dozen different moments that could be deemed the start of a relationship, and he wasn’t sure which one was right.

They sit down for their first dinner together, at Archie’s house, and Gold moves his plate from the seat next to Archie’s (where Archie had set it) to the seat across from him, further down the table. He makes eye contact with Archie, a silent challenge, and Archie backs away from it. Gold can sit as far away as he wants.

They sit down to watch a movie together, months later, and Gold gives a disdainful look to the throw pillow wedged between them -- a green thing with a cricket embroidered on it. He tosses it aside and then they’re sitting with their thighs touching, and Archie isn’t sure what to do.

They sit down together when Gold arrives uninvited at eleven p.m. on a Thursday night, with purple shadows underneath his eyes. Archie lets him in and asks no questions when Gold pours him a drink of wine from the bottle he brought and they just sit there, talking quietly about nothing, until night turns into day.

They sit down and their hands touch and Gold doesn’t move away, so Archie doesn’t either.

They sit down for a movie and Archie falls asleep, tired from a long day of work, and Gold doesn’t move Archie’s head off his lap.

They sit down and Archie invites Mr. Gold to stay the night.

Perhaps that’s the turning point.

Perhaps not.


	6. Chapter 6

Archie hears the door open and close and knows that Gold is home, though the other man doesn’t call out. He can hear the clunk of Gold’s cane on the tile, hears the other man come up beside him to look at what Archie’s cooking. It’s been a month since they started sharing beds, though they haven’t even kissed yet -- Archie’s not sure if he can call it ‘sleeping together’, as Gold goes to bed after Archie is already sleep and gets up long before the other man wakes up.

Gold reaches over Archie’s shoulder, tips over a little cricket-shaped salt-shaker that was sitting on the condiments shelf, and backs off silently.

 _Bastard_. Archie looks over his shoulder, meaning to throw the other man a glare, and instead runs right into Gold’s lips. He’s too shocked for a moment to do anything -- the kiss is light, chaste, barely there. Then Gold pulls away, his eyes dark.

“Let’s fuck,” he says. It takes Archie a moment to process those words.

“What?” he says. Gold repeats himself, calmly and deliberately.

“Let’s fuck.”

Archie flounders, his face heating up faster than Mt. Vesuvius. “I -- what -- we’ve never even kissed!”

“We just did,” says Gold reasonably. “We can do it again, if that wasn’t enough for you.”

This isn’t like Gold. Not at all -- Gold is unemotional and distant, the very opposite of passionate. He never tries to start _anything_ , let alone something sexual. Archie hesitates, thinking mostly of how the dinner might burn if he gets too caught up in this. Then he leans forward, and the kiss -- which starts off sweet and innocent like the first -- quickly takes a different turn when Gold’s tongue thrusts into his mouth, finding all of his sensitive spots with an unreal efficiency, and before Archie knows it he’s being backed into a corner; Gold’s hands are clenched in his shirt, grabbing at his collar, and --

This is too much, too fast. Archie breaks away. Gold takes two quick steps back, his usual impenetrable mask back in place, his eyes shuttered and blank.

Archie wipes his mouth, breathing heavily, unsure what to think or say.

“Well,” he says eventually, feeling more awkward than he has in weeks. “That was … um … unexpected.”

Gold doesn’t respond. He twists his cane against the floor, staring at a fixed point in the distance. He looks awkward somehow, in a way he never has before. Archie clears his throat; he can feel how red his face is.

“Well, I … I’d better make dinner,” he says eventually. “You know, before it burns.”

Gold nods shortly, turning away. The conversation they have during dinner is clipped and brief, almost silent on Gold’s part, and Archie tries desperately to figure out what he did wrong, what he might have said -- and above all, what caused the sudden burst of passion from someone usually so conservative.

Gold doesn’t stay the night. He goes out alone, just nodding in response to Archie’s goodbye, stepping briskly out of the way of an attempted hug. Archie watches him go and thinks about the kiss for the hundredth time that evening. There’s something about it that bothers him, and it takes him a while to pinpoint it, to give it a name.

It hadn’t been passionate at all. It was an accurate facsimile of passion, the sort of thing you expect to see from an A-list actor in a movie. Emotionless, mechanical.

Rote.


	7. Chapter 7

They’ve been steadily growing closer, and it’s like a dunk in cold water when Gold doesn’t talk to Archie for the next three days. Archie can’t for the life of him figure out what he did wrong -- his mind goes back to the kiss, over and over again, examining it from every detail. Is Gold acting different now because Archie didn’t respond right? Or because Gold himself miscalculated, did something wrong -- and if that’s the case, if that’s what he thinks, why is he secluding himself like this?

Archie’s not upset about the kiss. He’s perturbed by it, yes, but that’s different -- it’s not an emotion that warrants silent treatment or mutual avoidance. If Gold were -- well, someone else, they probably would have just talked it out and gone to bed together like always. But instead, they’re stuck in some sort of hellish situation where it seems Gold has made the decision to break up and hasn’t bothered to inform his boyfriend.

It starts when they pass each other on the street in the morning, before Archie has done much thinking on the subject; he sees Gold coming, and he has just enough time to torment himself in his head about just how awkward this is gonna be. What will Gold do? Will he act like nothing unusual happened? Will he get embarrassed? Will he acknowledge the kiss?

“Good morning,” Archie manages to garble out before Gold passes him. He adds a smile and a nod in the mix, and cranes his neck to look over his shoulder as Gold keeps walking.

Archie has been completely ignored. He takes the next few steps with almost no feeling in his legs and then stops when he reaches the sidewalk, looking back just in time to see Gold disappear into his pawnshop. Is it possible Gold didn’t see him? He doubts it. The other man made a deliberate attempt to ignore him -- quite rudely, Archie might add -- and that does the opposite of scare Archie away. It makes him determined.

That afternoon, when Archie’s got an hour to spare between appointments, he makes his way to Granny’s for two cups of coffee (it only took him fifteen times to get Gold’s order right, and now he’s got it memorized forever) and then to the pawnshop. It looms over him like a shadowy, therapist-eating bear.

Archie squares his shoulders and walks through the door.

“Dr. Hopper,” Gold greets from the counter, his voice neutral and evenly-paced. “Is there anything I can help you with?”

He manages to send a dismissive look in Archie’s general direction -- not quite at Archie, but in the area -- and it makes Archie feel like he’s a man made out of windows. He sets Gold’s coffee down centimeters from the other man’s long fingers; Gold doesn’t acknowledge it.

“You’re being unusually prickly today,” Archie says. “Is something wrong?”

He doesn’t get an immediate answer. Gold pushes away from the counter and leans on his cane instead. His eyes are hooded and cold.

“I’m a busy man, Dr. Hopper,” he says. Archie pushes the cup of coffee forward a little bit further, but Gold doesn’t even look at it.

“Is this about last night?” Archie asks. “The kiss?” He thinks back over the events, making connections even as Gold’s face closes off. This sudden coldness is recognizable to him from the stories he’s heard in couple’s therapy, examples he’s seen in textbooks. It’s avoidance, a reactionary show of fear, of worry that one might be (or already has been) rejected. And though Archie can string all those words together in his head clinically, he’s never had to use them in a relationship before, and he isn’t sure where to start.

“If you don’t plan to buy anything, Dr. Hopper,” says Mr. Gold while Archie is still thinking, “I’m afraid I must ask you to leave.”

He slides the coffee cup back across the counter to Archie and, numbly, Archie takes it. 


	8. Chapter 8

The next morning is like a textbook example of deja vu. There are minor tweaks from the day before -- for example, when Archie says “good morning,” he gets a scowl in response instead of just being ignored. He reminds himself that this could _technically_ be seen as an improvement, but when he brings coffee at lunch, he finds the door locked and a Closed sign placed -- temporarily -- in the window. He can see the light on in Gold’s backroom and curses himself silently for always coming at the same time, for being predictable enough that Gold has already thought of a defense.

The day passes without any conversation at all, and it looks like the third day will go the same until Archie finds himself sitting alone at home, staring at a blank TV, the notes from today’s therapy sessions spread before him. He can’t concentrate on them. His mind is running through hoola-hoops of anxiety and frustration -- worry one moment, anger the next, and all of it directed at Gold. He’s _certain_ he did nothing wrong, and certain he could work out whatever issue they’re having -- it is, after all, his _job_ \-- if Gold would only talk to him. But Gold won’t, and that’s when the anger wins out over everything else, and Archie grabs his coat, gets in his car, and drives.

The houses surrounding Gold’s are all dark, but there’s a light on in Gold’s, and Archie doesn’t hesitate before knocking on the door. He waits, the wind biting at him and whistling in his ears, but no one answers the door.

“C’mon,” Archie mutters, knocking louder. He waits a while, listens for any sound that might be construed as footsteps, but it’s clear that Gold is ignoring him, and Archie’s not having any of that. Not tonight.

He takes a deep breath, raises his fist, and raps on the stained-glass windowpane.

The door opens immediately.

“Are you insane?” Gold snaps. “This is an  _historical_ _house_ , Archie, that window is worth more than your _car_.” He’s glaring, and not half-heartedly.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” Archie says.

“ _Piss_ _off_ ,” Gold replies. He tries to close the door; Archie sticks his foot in and grabs the frame, keeping it open.

“Just _listen_ to me,” he says. “We’re in a relationship. That’s give-and-take, OK? If you’re upset about something, that’s your right, but you can’t just leave and keep me in the dark. I need to know what I’m doing wrong. Or what _we’re_ doing wrong.”

Gold is trying to keep his face in a blank mask, but he’s failing, and edges of anger are creeping in.

“We’re _not_ in a relationship,” he says.

“Since when?” asks Archie, anger turning his voice shrill. With a sudden violent strength, Gold shoves Archie away from the door, and the bigger man nearly stumbles backward down the steps before he catches himself.

“We never were,” Gold says. “Piss off, stop bothering me, and don’t come back.”

And he slams the door in Archie’s face. Archie stares up at the dark house, at the unforgiving blankness of the front door. The next day, Archie leaves home a little later, so he won’t cross paths with Gold in the morning. At lunch, he stays in his office, determined not to even think about getting coffee, about going to the pawnshop, about seeing Gold.  He doesn’t make any attempt at contact at all.

 _All this drama over a kiss_ , he thinks.

 

 


	9. Chapter 9

It’s ten minutes into Archie’s lunchbreak when a knock comes at his office door and he opens it to a dignified-looking Mr. Gold carrying a single cup of coffee, which he places in Archie’s hands.

“Can I come in?” asks Gold, like nothing’s happened. Archie stares at him for a while, blinking his surprise away. He wants to get angry; it’s his right to be angry, after Gold ignored him for an entire week, after he said so many awful things two nights before. But all things told, Archie isn’t good at being angry.

“Uh, sure,” he says eventually. “Come in.”

And just like that, they’re in a relationship again.

Silently, they both agree not to talk about the conflict (though Archie still thinks about it, almost constantly, wondering what it all means) and their normal routine falls back into place. They watch Archie’s favorite movies -- Gold tells him stories, impersonal anecdotes, with a colorful storytelling flair -- they go for brief walks, and Archie spends the whole time watching Gold for any signs of discomfort or pain in his leg, worried he might accidentally walk too long.

At night, Archie announces that he’s going to bed -- “Goodnight,” Gold says -- and goes up to change into his pajamas alone. Like every night, he is always asleep when Gold finally joins him, and when he wakes up in the morning, Gold is already dressed, making breakfast (or, more often, a pot of coffee) downstairs.

This night, a Saturday, is rent day, and when Archie announces that he’s going to bed -- it’s eleven o’clock, a little later than usual, for him -- Gold just hums a response and continues reading the newspaper. He’s been out walking all day, collecting rent from almost everyone in town, and he’s looked exhausted since he came home at six.

“Do you wanna join me?” Archie asks. Gold looks up briefly, and then back down at the paper.

“I’ll be up in a few hours,” he says dismissively. Archie nods, though he believes Gold will probably pass out from exhaustion long before then. He goes upstairs and changes, and he’s only just drifted off to sleep, it seems, when a sudden weight on the bed wakes him up. He lifts his head slightly, neck straining, and sees Gold’s form on the far edge of the bed, curled up far away from Archie. For a while, Archie just keeps staring. Gold is wearing Archie’s clothes -- an old sweater, a pair of flannel pajama pants -- and he’s amazed the other man didn’t wake him up while changing. Then again, he never does.

“Gold?” Archie says, his voice little more than a whisper. The other man gives no sign of response, so Archie scoots forward, bringing the blankets with him, and settles the covers around both of them. He wonders if Gold always sleeps so far away, out of reach and outside the blankets. It must be cold, if he does; Maine in the spring isn’t exactly tropical.

When he puts an arm around Gold and feels the tension in the other man’s frame, he realizes Gold’s unnatural stillness isn’t from sleep. Tentatively, Archie relaxes, hoping Gold will follow his lead. With his hand on Gold’s chest, he can feel the other man’s restricted and deliberate breathing, can feel him trying to stay as frozen as possible.

Archie musters up all of his courage -- why he even needs courage to do this, he isn’t sure -- and pulls Gold closer, until their bodies are pressed together. Gold jerks, unwillingly, and Archie can feel the other man’s heart jumping beneath his palm. Then Gold relaxes, slowly and reluctantly, and turns into the warmth. His muscles stiffen every now and then, like a tremor passing through his body, and Archie rubs his hand along Gold’s back until the shaking passes. He doesn’t speak, and neither does Gold.

Archie’s not quite sure when he falls asleep.


	10. Chapter 10

The next morning, Archie wakes up alone, but the blankets are still warm, so Gold must not be too far ahead of him. After a shower and brushing his teeth, he finds the other man still in his pajamas and half-asleep, making a pot of coffee downstairs

“Sleep well?” Archie asks. Gold’s eyes flicker over to him; he shrugs.

Archie has a feeling that if he sits down, he’ll fall back asleep at the kitchen table and never wake up, He paces the room instead, stretching a little, pulling out all the necessary ingredients for an omelet from the refrigerator.

On his way to the stove, Archie stifles a yawn and reaches over, his hand coming down on Gold’s shoulder. All sleep is driven out of him when Gold jerks violently away, the coffee spilling from his hand. Archie jumps back before the hot liquid can get on his clothes but it still splashes around his feet, quickly cooling, and when he looks up, he realizes Gold is speaking, his tone hard and cold, his words fast.

“--I don’t like it, and I don’t appreciate you doing it, so from now on--”

“What?” Archie interrupts, too startled to stop himself. Gold fixes him with a glare before starting over.

“ _Don’t touch me_ ,” he says, the words like daggers. “Not on the shoulders. Not _anywhere_ , not unless I say so. And don’t try to _hold_ me, or whatever you thought you were doing last night. I don’t like it, and I don’t appreciate you doing it. _Don’t do it again_.”

Archie just nods, his face hot, unable to speak. He can’t think of anything to say or do, just watches as Gold cleans up the spilled coffee and makes a new pot. In a few minutes, when the coffee is done and Archie’s muscles have unfrozen, they sit down at the table together, neither mentioning what just happened.

Fifteen minutes pass -- at the least -- before either of them speaks again.

“Why don’t you like to be touched?” Archie asks. He watches Gold’s eyes go flat and hard again.

“Do I need a reason?” he says coolly. “I said I don’t like it, and I don’t want you to do it. That ought to be enough.”

“It is,” Archie says. His own tone is mild, and he realizes with an awful feeling in his stomach that he’s using his therapist voice. “I’m sorry I touched your shoulder without asking. And I’m sorry for cuddling with you last night. I won’t do it again.”

Gold nods in acknowledgement, but when he sips his coffee, there’s a light dusting of pink on his cheeks. The hardness in his eyes has given way to a look of deep embarrassment, and now he refuses to look at Archie at all. He studies his coffee instead. A large part of Archie wants to start chattering about the weather, just to fill the silence.

He waits it out instead, watching the clock tick away. He realizes it’s been almost forty-five minutes since he touched Gold’s shoulder; they’ve spent so much time sitting in silence.

“I may have overreacted,” Gold admits finally, and the slight pinkness turns into a full red. Archie, who has never seen Gold blush before, tries simultaneously to fix the image into his long-term memory and to not be very obvious that he’s looking. “It’s just … early.”

That’s the most explanation he gives, and Archie doesn’t push him for more. By two o’clock that afternoon, Gold is working earnestly to show Archie that his ban on touch has been retracted, without actually saying as much in words. He touches Archie’s arm ‘casually’ and takes his hand at least five times in half an hour, an apology clear in his eyes. In most relationships, Archie supposes these actions would probably serve as a wordless dissolution of Gold’s no-touch request. But there’s a part of Archie that can’t accept that, a part that instinctively knows Gold’s aversion to touch deserves more respect than the play-acting he’s doing right now.

That night, for the first time, they go up to bed together, and when Gold changes into his sleepwear, Archie sees what must be an entire roll of bandages wrapped around Gold’s right leg, stretching from ankle to knee. Archie’s mouth goes dry, but he averts his gaze and says nothing about it.

He lies down and pulls the blankets over him. Gold lies down as far away from Archie as he can get.

Archie wonders why they bother sleeping together at all.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have zero excuses for not updating this every day, cuz like i said in the first chapter, IT'S ALREADY FINISHED. and the chapters are super short. so feel free to like ... mug me or something if i'm late. i deserve it.

It takes weeks before they kiss again. They’re walking through the woods behind Archie’s house, faces stinging from the brisk spring air, and the thought pops into Archie’s head that -- well, this lighting is beautiful, and he can’t think of a more perfect scene to replace their last kiss. So he doesn’t hesitate. He sees the surprise on Gold’s face for just a moment before both of them close their eyes, and this time the kiss starts off sweet and chaste and stays that way, stays gentle.

Archie is the first to pull away, and Gold’s eyes snap open at the loss of contact. He looks surprised again, but the surprise gives way to a more guarded expression, and he stares at Archie like he’s waiting for something.

“What?” Archie asks, feeling his face heat up at being examined. Gold’s eyes flick away.

“Nothing,” he says. He forces his eyes back to Archie’s, and though his voice is still neutral, his face still blank, Archie can tell the next words are difficult to say. “I’m becoming a bit more comfortable with this arrangement we have. This relationship.” His next words are almost too quiet to hear. “I like it.”

A giant smile bounds onto Archie’s face and Gold quickly looks away again. He rarely speaks so plainly about anything, much less about their relationship, and it’s taken away any edge of intimidation he still had in Archie’s mind. He looks smaller, like the wind could blow him away.

“Can I hug you?” Archie blurts -- a phrase that seemed so awkward when he first starting using it weeks before, but which now feels as natural as breathing. Gold barks out a laugh.

“If you want to,” he says, almost shyly, the smile twisting on his face. Archie steps forward, wraps his arms around Gold, and after a few skipped beats, Gold lifts his hands and curls his fingers into Archie’s coat, holding the two of them together. His face is hidden, pressed into Archie’s shoulder.

He pulls away abruptly, after only a few minutes, and his face is carefully blank again.

“Well, that’s enough of that,” he says gruffly. Archie only smiles, and when Gold starts off back toward home, Archie quickly catches up and grabs the other man’s free hand. Gold stares straight ahead, not looking at him, not reacting.

“I really like this, too,” says Archie lightly. “This relationship.”

Gold glances at him, one quick look, hard to read. They walk back together.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was a deleted scene that didn't get published in this fic the first time because I decided it didn't add anything to the story. But this is a fanfiction. Who gives a shit if it adds to the story?

There are days when Archie kisses Gold and Gold responds, days where Archie says, “It’s cold, come over here,” and soon enough they’re cuddling on the couch. There are days when kissing becomes touching, when Gold’s lips find Archie’s skin, and his fingers trace patterns over Archie’s back. There are days, even, when Gold lets Archie touch _him_ , though it’s never gotten farther than the outside of Gold’s boxers.

Then, of course, there are days where Gold dodges every kiss, days when Gold lies far away in bed, when he responds to nothing, when Archie knows better than to try to touch, knows better than to ask about what’s going on, because if he does either of those things he will trigger a disgusted tirade, an angry rant about sex, about sexualization, about greed and objectification and all sorts of thoughts that he never would have guessed were hidden in Gold’s head.

But through good days and bad days, they’ve never had days like this.

It was hard to tell when things went wrong. They were halfway through Archie’s Julia Roberts collection when Gold stood without a word and left the room. Archie watched him go, confused until he heard the bathroom door open and close. He turned back to the movie, wondering if he should pause it.

Fifteen minutes later, in the middle of an argument between Julia and Richard Gere, Gold still hadn’t returned. Archie went over everything they’d eaten that night in his head, trying to think of what could have caused a case of food poisoning and/or death. Nothing came to mind. Concerned now, he pushed himself off the couch and made his way through the house to the bathroom. He knocked once, rapping his knuckles against the doorframe.

“Gold?” he called. There was no answer; Archie listened closely and caught the sound of shallow breathing, too fast to be healthy, and when he identified the noise for what it was, he could feel his face get hot.

“Gold,” he said again, more tentatively, “are you crying?”

He listened as the breathing stopped temporarily, smothered in an attempt to be quiet, and tried the doorknob. It was locked.

“No,” said Gold from inside. His voice was trembling.

“Come outside,” Archie urged, trying to sound as soothing as he could. “Tell me what’s going on.”

He got no response, and so he turned around, leaning against the door. This would take a while.

“Why are you crying?” he asked. There was nothing in his voice but openness, curiosity. There was a long pause before Gold answered, his words quiet, almost inaudible, his voice whittled away into nothing.

“I don’t know.”

Archie nodded at the empty hallway. “Do you have any ideas?” he asked. His own voice was trembling a little now -- a side-effect, he supposed, of listening to a loved one cry. He heard a shaky breath from inside the bathroom.

“Yes,” said Gold eventually. “But….”

His voice trailed off.

“But you can’t tell me?” Archie guessed, and heard another sigh, this one quieter, more stable.

“Exactly,” Gold said. Archie felt the door shake, realized Gold was leaning against it as well. There was silence for a long time, and the sounds inside -- the trembling breaths, the quiet sniffs -- stopped.

“If I come out,” said Gold, his voice still quiet but now low, almost gravelly, “I don’t want to watch that movie anymore.”

Archie soaked that in, trying to figure out what was so offensive about _Pretty Woman_ , but not at all willing to argue. “OK,” he said. “No problem -- we don’t have to watch any movies you don’t want to, you know that.”

There was a slight pause, and he heard the lock on the bathroom door click. Archie stepped away, letting the door swing open, and Gold came out looking abashed and fiercely proud at the same time. He’d gotten rid of almost all evidence that he’d been crying; the only exception was a dried tear on his cheekbone. Archie licked his thumb and rubbed it away.

“Whenever you want to talk,” he said, “I’ll listen. And I promise not to think any less of you.”

Gold looked up at him, his eyes searching Archie’s.

“You can’t promise that,” he said mildly -- a simple statement of fact. “No one can promise not to feel disgust, Dr. Hopper. It isn’t human.”

“Nonetheless,” said Archie, “I promise that I’ll try.”

He met Gold’s gaze, let himself be searched, and eventually Gold turned his eyes away again, looking at the walls.

“Let’s watch _Mary Poppins_ ,” Archie suggested brightly. Gold barked out a laugh.

“Let’s watch a blank TV,” he countered.

Archie only smiled.

 

 


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So when i first started this story, this was the first chapter. I only added in all the previous chapters when i saw a kinkmeme prompt and i was like "dude i totally have half of this prompt written already, i just gotta write the beginning." Anyway from here on out it gets pretty dark, this is where all the warnings come into play.

The pictures started showing up in August. They were posters sometimes -- or photographs, or postcards -- but no matter their size, no matter where they showed up, and no matter the quality of the image, Emma had no problem connecting them together. They all starred the same little boy.

The problem was identifying this boy. No one in town seemed to recognize him, and he didn’t match descriptions or photographs of any of the missing children in the database. And no one really seemed to care, all of them too disturbed by what the pictures showed to think on it any longer than necessary.

He was a boy with brown hair and brown eyes, with a long nose and freckled cheeks. Cute and photogenic but unsmiling. Always unsmiling, always naked, always stained with blood and tears and -- every now and then -- with something worse, something not his own.

Standing in the breeze of late-summer Maine, Sheriff Swan reached up to the sign-post, wiggled fingers underneath the poster, where the staples were, and ripped it off. Behind her, Mr. Gold leaned on his cane, his eyes fixed in the distance.

“Figured you wouldn’t want anyone else to see it,” he said. Gold had been the one to call this one in -- it was the fourth picture in two weeks. He looked up at her as she stalked past him, cold eyes narrowed, and followed along -- the wind pushed him a step or two off course, but he corrected his stride each time with grace, feet barely touching the ground, dancing over the pavement on the wind.

Emma reached her cruiser and stopped, tucking the poster into a plastic bag that was laying in the passenger seat. Mr. Gold stepped up to her, his sun-strained eyes following her movements. When Emma finally looked back at him, he just smiled at her, though the sentiment didn’t reach his eyes.

“What’re you going to do with it?” he asked. Emma narrowed her eyes at him a little, taking note of the question -- the other people who’d reported these pictures just left as soon as it was taken care of. They didn’t stick around to ask her things.

“Take fingerprints,” she said. “Check it for traces of DNA, see if we can figure out where it was printed.”

He leaned forward, spidery fingers clasping on the roof of her car. “Have you found any clues, then, on the other pictures?”

Emma raised her eyebrows at him. “What are you, a reporter?”

He just shrugged and grinned again, like the Cheshire Cat. Emma snorted and shook her head.

“Don’t you have rent to collect from some poor soul?” she asked.

“I’m gonna take your avoidance of the question as a no,” said Mr. Gold. He bent at the waist when Emma slipped into the driver’s seat, looking at her through the window on the other side. “You’re trying to find out who the boy is, aren’t you?”

Key in the ignition, Emma paused and looked over at him. Mr. Gold flicked a strand of hair out of his narrow face.

“You should quit,” he advised her. “Focus on the one taking the pictures instead. You don’t even know when these pictures were taken; could have been years ago. The child’s probably dead by now.”

Emma felt her fingers clench on the steering wheel, a barrage of half-forgotten images, foster parents and foster siblings, flashing behind her eyes. Her voice was quiet when it came out. “You don’t know that, Mr. Gold.”

“I’d wager on it, though,” he replied, matching her somber tone. “I hear they kill them quickly. Men like that -- the children hardly ever stand a chance. They go missing, the police start a search for them … but most of them don’t make it more than a single day.”

She watched him and he watched her, neither speaking, both waiting for the other to continue the conversation. Finally, Emma reached for her key again and turned it. The engine revved to life; she put the car in gear and pulled out without another word, leaving Mr. Gold to step away from the window at his leisure, retreating to the curb, lifting one hand in a lazy wave as Emma drove away.

 

 


	14. Chapter 14

When the two of them reach Gold’s home that afternoon, there’s an orange package sitting in the mailbox with no postage on it, completely unmarked. Archie watches Gold collect it, sees the careful look his partner gives it, and he doesn’t say a word. It’s rare that they have dinner at Gold’s house -- rare that they do _anything_ at Gold’s house, to be honest -- and Archie doesn’t want to ruin the mood.

Gold throws the package on the counter like it’s nothing, and he cooks dinner while he chats with Archie, while they laugh and share stories and Archie’s eyes flicker to it, while they talk about favorite movies and things Pongo does and Gold’s eyes flicker to it, too, but neither mention the package. Gold sets two plates down on the table; his is nearly bare, like maybe he doesn’t have an appetite, and Archie tries not to let that bother him too much. Sometimes, Gold doesn’t eat at all, so this is surely nothing to worry about.

They eat. They talk. They wash the dishes together when it’s over, and Archie wonders why anyone would send an unmarked package. They would have to come to the house themselves, place it personally in the mailbox, all just so it wouldn’t be traced … and what on Earth would they send? He knows that Gold has enemies, wonders sometimes if Gold might have enemies willing to hurt him, willing to blackmail him, wonders what Gold is willing to do to his enemies in return. An unmarked package would be perfect for blackmail -- for unsavory photos, for anonymous letters -- but if Gold thinks anything of it, he doesn’t seem too bothered.

They go to the living room and Archie finds the cello lying there, against the wall, and asks if Gold can play. He can. He asks if Gold will, and soon the cello is in tune and there are soft notes in the air, a little unpracticed, but Gold’s fingers are long and beautiful with the bow, running along the strings, and Archie doesn’t mind, and when he sees the look of unease pass over Gold’s face he assumes it’s because of nothing more than a sour note.

“I’m sorry,” Gold says, confirming Archie’s suspicions when the music is done and he sets the bow down with a trembling hand. “I, ah -- I haven’t played in a while.”

He swallows hard. His eyes flicker toward the kitchen, toward the unmarked passage. Just some sour notes, Archie tells himself.

“It’s fine,” he says to Gold. “It sounded great -- are you OK? You look like you’re shaking.”

Gold nods once, tightly, his jaw clenched.

“Let’s go to bed,” Archie says, and he grabs Gold’s hand, leads him up the stairs to Gold’s bedroom. And if he wakes up sometime in the night, with the smell of sex still lingering in the air, then he most certainly doesn’t see -- must have imagined -- Gold standing before an open closet door, Gold with the unmarked package in his hand and a pile of identical ones piled up before him, unopened, Gold dragging a trunk in front of them and laying them flat so no one will ever see. If he wakes up in the middle of the night, Archie certainly doesn’t see that.


	15. Chapter 15

“Have you heard about those pictures?” Archie asks over the movie. For a moment, Gold doesn’t really hear him. Then the words click and his face, already blank, shutters off any possibility of an expression.

“I saw one today,” he says, not looking Archie’s way. The other man sits up straighter, eyes wide.

“You saw one?”

Gold’s eyes flicker his way and then back again. Slowly, Archie relaxes back into the couch, his mind whirring.

“God, I’m sorry,” he says. “Was it as bad as everyone says? Are you OK?”

“I’ve seen worse,” says Gold absently. “In movies. How bad does everyone say it is?”

Too intent on ignoring Archie, he misses the moment of concerned consideration from his partner. Archie turns his eyes back to the TV for a moment, seeing through it.

“I’ve never really talked to anyone about it,” he says, “but I know there was a, uh, a poster put up outside Granny’s Diner. And a lot of people who went there for breakfast seemed pretty shaken up which is, you know, it’s understandable. Anyone would be, at something like that.”

“It’s just a picture,” Gold mutters. He doesn’t give Archie his attention, focuses it on an inane romance film he’d never normally care for, and that’s a warning sign Archie can recognize in any situation. He leans forward with his elbows on his knees, turns his head to look Gold’s way, and sees Gold’s eyes shutter when he realizes he’s being watched.

“How did you find it?” Archie asks. He has Gold’s gaze again, this time with eyebrows furrowed, a look of cautious suspicion.

“It was on a lamp-post,” Gold says, “in front of my shop. Rather hard to miss.”

“Same as the others?”

“I couldn’t tell you. It’s the only one I’ve seen.”

Gold is perfectly composed as he speaks -- casual, relaxed -- but his fingers are twisted, clenching his trouser leg. Archie takes a deep breath in and lets it out through his nose, trying to think things through. It’s just like Gold to pretend to be unaffected by something so awful, and when he gets like this, Archie knows how hard it is to get the man to open up. Gold will go back home without another word, spend the night alone if it means he doesn’t have to talk.

“What did you do?” Archie asks, a safe enough question, and Gold shifts in his seat.

“I called the police,” he says. “Sheriff Swan came and took it away.”

He shrugs, a minute gesture, and Archie reaches across the couch -- they’ve moved away from each other some point, are sitting now with almost a yard between them -- to take Gold’s hand in his. There is silence for a long time, and both of them are perfectly still. Archie can see a muscle jumping in Gold’s jaw, can feel how tense Gold is -- even his fingers, enclosed by Archie’s much-larger ones, are stiff and unmovable.

Then, suddenly, Gold squeezes Archie’s hand and the moment is broken. He stands and turns, a flicker of pinstripes and silk before Archie’s eyes, and his fingers unzip Archie’s trousers, take him in hand. His breath ghosts over Archie, cool and caressing, lingering, and --

“Stop,” Archie says, reaching out, so startled that he stutters. It’s like Gold can’t hear him and a jolt of pleasure surges through Archie before he manages to sit up, to put his hands on Gold’s shoulders and push the other man back. Gold looks up at him, his face almost blank save for the shock and the trepidation in his eyes.

“ _Stop_ _it_ ,” Archie says again. “Not right now, we’re -- we’re having a _conversation_ here. You can’t just -- just _start_ something with me to avoid talking, OK? It isn’t healthy.”

Gold’s hand rests on his knee; Archie isn’t sure when it got there but he does his best to glare at Gold, and Gold more than matches him.

“It’s just a blowjob,” Gold says. “You can’t tell me you don’t want it.”

“Well, I don’t,” Archie says. He takes both of Gold’s hands in his and squeezes, tries to beckon the other man back onto the couch -- “C’mon, sit down,” -- but Gold breaks away with his ease, plucks his cane up from where it leans against the coffee table. He turns his back without ever meeting Archie’s eyes and walks out of the room, silent, slow, dignified.

With a long sigh, Archie buries his head in his hands and wonders how they got to this point.

 

 


	16. Chapter 16

It’s a Thursday night, and Archie and Gold have no plans to see each other -- both of them worked late today, neither has the energy -- and so Archie isn’t sure what to think when he hears an almost frantic knocking at the door. He answers it, knowing who will be on the other side but expecting someone else anyway.

“Archie,” says Gold curtly. His voice is cold and calm as always but his eyebrows are peaked and his lips almost look like they might be trembling -- Archie isn’t sure.

“I didn’t know you were coming over,” he says, but he moves aside to let Gold in even as he speaks, and Gold pushes past him, through the living room to the tiny kitchen where Archie was preparing a microwavable meal. Gold stands there for a moment, his back to Archie, staring at the collection of cricket plushies that sit opposite him on a shelf. Archie just watches him; any words he might say are dead in his throat, choked down by some unnameable emotion, and he’s not sure at all what’s going on, but he’s worried -- he can feel the tension, feel that something just below the surface is waiting to erupt.

Gold’s voice is so quiet Archie almost misses it.

“If I tell you something,” Gold says with his back still turned, his face still hidden, “will you promise not to laugh at me?”

Archie’s mouth is dry. He nods before he remembers that Gold isn’t even facing him, and then he forces out a parched-sounding “Yes.” He sees Gold’s shoulders rise and fall, a silent sigh. Then Gold half-turns to look at him, only his profile visible, and he says,

“There was a package on my desk today. Inside my study.”

Archie nods before he really absorbs the words, and he’s so concentrated on Gold’s meaning, on Gold’s well-being, that he fails to connect the words the way he should.

“Nothing on it,” Gold says, his voice dipping quieter. “No postage, same thing in it as the others. But it was in my _study_ , Archie. Just sitting there, on my desk, like ….” He trails off, shaking his head ever-so-slightly, and words seem to fail him for the moment. “Like a gift,” he says eventually. “Like a threat.”

Archie is silent, remembering the unmarked packages that he pretended not to see, that he decided must have just been a dream, and a feeling of shame that he can only partially explain fills him. Gold has turned away from him again, completely, and Archie has just enough time to wonder why Gold thought he might laugh at him for this before the other man speaks again.

“I was scared,” Gold says plainly. There’s more after that -- there _must_ be more -- but that’s where he quits talking and puts a hand over his mouth instead, silencing anything else he might have to say. Archie stumbles forward, his legs feeling unexpectedly numb, and he hugs Gold from behind, feels the other man drawing shallow breaths.

“You can stay here,” Archie murmurs. “As long as you need. Until whoever it is that’s sending you things is caught. We’ll go over tomorrow, together, and get your clothes, OK?”

A long, shuddering breath before Gold nods and Archie’s hands shift slightly over the other man’s jacket. He’s so concentrated on holding Gold that he barely notices the solid square lump in one of Gold’s inner pockets. It’s the size of a photograph, but thick enough to be an entire stack of them, and suddenly Archie’s curiosity is switched on.

When they pull away from each other, when Gold’s cool mask is back in place, Archie decides it’s safe to ask the question.

“Gold?” he says. “What’s in your pocket?”

There’s a skipped beat in time, where the clocks stop ticking and people stop aging and Archie has time to see just how many different forks in the road can be taken from here, all hinging on Gold’s response. He sees how Gold’s neutrality has the capability to splinter into any of a thousand new expressions, can almost hear a thousand different explanations, can envision his reaction to each one, their lives afterward, and it all will be decided by what Gold says.

“Nothing,” says Gold. He is perfectly blank until he turns, makes a face at the abandoned microwaved dinner that Archie had been preparing. “You weren’t really going to _eat_ that, were you?”

Time starts up again.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the beginning of the end. Major trigger warning for child sexual abuse in this chapter

Sheriff Swan has better things to do than check her email everyday, but by chance she checks it today, checks it over a cup of coffee and a plate of pancakes in Mary Margaret’s apartment. There isn’t much of interest to be seen, that’s for sure. Spam mail and billing notices and social media invitations that she’s never gonna accept. She’s about to exit when the page unexpectedly refreshes, and something new is sitting in her inbox.

Emma sets her coffee down, looks to see if Mary Margaret is anywhere nearby -- she needs someone to clarify the subject line she’s seeing. But Mary Margaret isn’t there, so Emma clicks on the email and opens the attachment, waits for it to load.

 _Mr. Gold Makes a Movie_ , the subject line reads. Emma doesn’t have much time to ponder that, not much at all, before the video-attachment pops onto her screen and starts to play.

She’s looking at a dark little room contained inside an even smaller box, and when she enlarges it the screen is filled with a faceless man, nothing visible above his neck, everything in the world visible below, and at his feet is the little boy whose face has been posted all around Storybrooke for the past month.

Emma’s stomach drops. The man’s hips thrusts, the child chokes, and then feeling comes back to Emma’s hands and she clicks the little red X that turns the movie off. Her breath comes out in gasps; she can’t hear anything but her own heartbeat drumming in her ears.

 _Mr. Gold Makes a Movie_ , the subject line reads. Well, it looks like she’s found her culprit.

* * *

 

Archie’s standing in the middle of the hallway with a smile on his face and an armful of Gold’s clothes when he sees Emma Swan coming up the stairs. The surprise of it, of Emma inside Gold’s house, knocks the smile out of him and replaces it with a single, wild thought -- ‘So Emma is the blackmailer?’ -- before she strides up to him and stops, her eyes hard and clear.

“Is Gold here?” she asks, so quietly she may as well have mouthed it. Bewildered, Archie nods -- he points behind him, to Gold’s bedroom, where the two of them were packing. Emma stalks off without a thank you and Archie finds himself following her, just in time to see the startled look on Gold’s face when Emma walks into the room.

“Sheriff Swan --” he says, the beginning of a question, and then with a click his hands are cuffed behind him, and both he and Archie are too surprised to move.

“Wait, wait!” says Archie, his voice startled out of him. He takes a step forward and then jumps back again, thinking better of it. His hands are held up in supplication. “What’s going on? Emma--”

“Mr. Gold,” says Emma, “you are under arrest for the production and distribution of child pornography, and for the sexual assault of a minor. You have--”

“What?” Archie interrupts, his voice rising.

“Dr. Hopper, please don’t get involved,” Emma says. Gold’s expressions have been blocked off, and for Archie, that is the single most terrifying part of all of this. What could Gold have to hide in a situation like this? Why would he be so carefully blank if he wasn’t --?

Archie can only watch, can only step aside as Gold is led away, and he can hear Gold murmuring to Emma, but the other man’s voice is so low that Archie can’t make out the words.

“Not likely,” Emma snaps, and this time Archie can hear what Gold says.

“Check the closet,” he says. “The closet in my bedroom. Behind the trunk. There are packages there, unmarked, and if you match the faces in there with the faces in your database--” Emma shoves him down a step and Gold stumbles, his voice coming out a hitch louder. “-- Check my pockets! I have the letter with me, if you match them up, you’ll know what’s going on! The man in the pictures--”

“You’re saying you’re not in the video?” Emma asks him, her voice exasperated, dangerous. “You’re saying you had _nothing_ to do with those photos?”

There is only silence in response -- silence from Gold and silence all throughout the house. Then Archie manages to get his legs to work and he follows them out into the hall, sees them stopped there with Gold’s head down, hair covering his eyes.

Archie swallows hard -- his voice is trembling, echoing in the silence when he says, “Emma, can you please explain what’s going on?”

She looks at him sharply, suspiciously, but the hardness in her gaze fades as she seems to realize that she’s glaring at _Archie_ of all people, and instead she turns the glare on Gold.

“Someone sent me an email this morning,” Emma say. “It’s a video … called Mr. Gold Makes a Movie.” She hesitates, and there’s a hollowness in her eyes that Archie associates with horror, the sort of look a person gets when they see something they never wanted to see. Emma shakes her head, gestures to Mr. Gold with a jerk of her hand. “He’s the one behind it all,” she says. “The pictures around town. He’s the one taking them.”

Archie stares at Gold, desperate for some sort of response, but Gold’s head is still tilted toward the ground, his face hidden from sight.

“Gold,” Archie says, voice soft, pleading, “was it you in the video?”

Emma shifts her stance, blocking the path down the stairs like she thinks Gold will try to escape. Her grip on Gold’s shoulder tightens; she and Archie both await an answer.

“Yes,” Gold says, his voice quiet. His chest expands and collapses in a shuddering breath, words coming out as hardly more than a whisper. “If it’s the same video I got last night … yes. And I’m in the pictures that are in my closet … and the ones hanging up around town. But I’m not an adult in them. And I’m not the one who took them, or hung them up.”

Emma’s hand falls from Gold’s shoulder. She looks at Archie; he doesn’t look back at her. He can’t seem to take his gaze off of Gold, seems frozen as the full weight of his partner’s words crash down on him.

Gold’s gaze remains on the floor.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was the last chapter of the original story! i have one more written that was only recently finished but no more are planned, so from this point on updates will be pretty sporadic. (as in, I'm pretty sure I'll keep writing more scenes, I just don't when, or what they'll be SORRY sorry. sorry.) anyway enjoy

They sit around a coffee table with all the evidence before them; Emma has already bagged five of the unopened packages, and the contents of one are spread out on the table. Archie feels disconnected from reality; he tries his hardest to keep his eyes on the curtains while Gold speaks, but inevitably his gaze is dragged back to the photos, to the anonymous letters, to the face he should have recognized.

“You can’t truly call it blackmail,” says Gold emotionlessly, as detached as Archie feels. “The person sending these things, whoever they are, they never make any demands. Only threats, and -- well, you can see.”

He gestures toward the coffee table, sends his gaze up to the ceiling. Archie doesn’t want to read the letters but his eyes comb them anyway, betray him by gathering knowledge. And Gold is right, this isn’t blackmail -- this is nothing but pure harassment. The letters threaten beatings and they threaten rape, but they never put forth anything that can stop the threats from coming true.

Archie leans back on the sofa. He feels sick. He tries to turn off his brain, tries to block the words he’s hearing -- the quiet explanations, the indifferent tone Gold uses for atrocities -- but they worm into his ears no matter what, and when Emma finally stands to leave it’s all Archie can do not to burst into tears of relief.

He stands and sees her out, helps her carry the evidence bags. Gold stays behind, and when Archie returns he’s still sitting there on the couch, his face gravely still, his hands clasped over his cane. His eyes waver, but he doesn’t look at Archie, not quite.

“You can go now,” he says, with a flick of the head toward the door. Archie stares at him; the words don’t process in his head.

“I’m sorry?” he says. Gold’s indifference hardens into a glare, but he aims it at Archie’s feet, still unable to meet the other man’s eyes.

“I said you can go,” he says. “Go home. You don’t have to stay here and --”

He gestures futilely, words failing him, and he tries to keep glaring but his eyebrows quirk upward and he ducks his head, hides his face again. Archie watches it all with his heart aching. He kneels down just in front of Gold and takes the other man’s hand, squeezes it gently. Gold shakes his head and looks up with an exasperated snort, but his hand is still in Archie’s, and Archie can feel him shaking.

“I’m not gonna leave you,” Archie says, his voice as gentle as it’s ever been. “Not even temporarily, Gold, not over something like this. And you can’t fool me by telling me to go. I’ve been dating you long enough not to fall for that.”

Gold pulls his hands back and shifts away, but Archie just follows him.

“Gold, I know--”

“Stop,” says Gold harshly. His face is twisted with anger; Archie’s words fall back down his throat like they never existed. “Stop talking,” Gold says, “and stop lying to me. Just go.”

“Gold--” Archie starts. He reaches his hands out and Gold jerks away; his cane comes up between them faster than Archie can even see, the silver handle resting heavily in the center of Archie’s chest and trembling along with Gold’s hand, an unspoken threat.

Tears are running down Gold’s cheeks, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

“I don’t want you here,” he says, voice breathless but still painfully composed.  He compresses his lips, trying to keep his face from working. “And you don’t want to be here anymore either, so stop pretending. _Please_.”

“I’m not pretending,” Archie says quietly. He wraps his fingers around the cane and tugs it out of Gold’s hands, places it beside him on the floor. Gold stares at him in desperation for a moment and then looks away, wipes his eyes with the heel of his hand. When Archie kneels before him again, Gold doesn’t look up, and he folds into Archie’s embrace without a fight. He feels boneless, exhausted.

“Whatever happened to you in the past,” Archie murmurs, “it wasn’t your fault, Gold. No matter how it happened, or what you did, or how you felt -- you were a child, and someone else decided to hurt you, and those are the plain facts.” He can feel Gold’s hands coming up, clenching in Archie’s shirt as the smaller man begins to shake. Archie pulls him closer, runs his hands up and down Gold’s back. “The people who hurt you are the ones to blame,” Archie tells him, his chin resting on the top of Gold’s head. “They’re the sick ones. They’re the ones in the wrong, and they’re the ones who ought to be punished, not you. OK?”

Gold does not and cannot give him a response -- neither verbally nor with a nod of his head -- but there are tears soaking through the front of Archie’s shirt now, and he can feel as well as hear the shallow breaths that Gold is taking. Archie squeezes his eyes shut and lets his own tears fall.

He holds Gold close to him and tries to offer up some more comforting words, but nothing will come out anymore and so the words just circle around inside Archie’s head, unable to make it past his throat. He tries to breathe deeply, evenly, but he’s not surprised when he fails, and instead he concentrates on the breathless sounds that Gold is making, and realizes that Gold is trying to speak through the tears.

Out of a hundred broken, whispered sentences, the only phrase Archie can make sense of is “I’m sorry.”

 

 


	19. Chapter 19

They go to bed together but when Archie wakes up the next morning, Gold is gone. Archie’s worried only until he smells the scent of coffee brewing downstairs, and then his mind goes back to the days when he and Gold had only just started dating, when he could never be sure if Gold had really spent the night with him or not.

It seems they’ve regressed. 

The kitchen is quiet when Archie walks in, his slippers sliding on the tile floor. Gold doesn’t look up from the newspaper in front of him; when Archie puts a hand on his shoulder, the other man shrugs it off.

Resignedly, Archie grabs a cup of coffee and takes a seat. He can feel Gold’s eyes land on him briefly before being turned away again, and then Gold folds up his newspaper and sets it aside.

“Archie,” he says, voice low. Archie looks up, clasps his coffee in both hands when he sees the solemn look on Gold’s face.

“I’m listening,” Archie says. Gold folds his hands, resting them on the table before him. He looks like a businessman ready to cut a deal.

“I want you to know,” he says, “that despite everything you found out yesterday, I’m the same person I’ve always been. I’m not going to change now because … you know some details I’d prefer you didn’t. I know I have an … unpleasant personality, to say the least, and that’s not the result of any sort of ‘trauma’ I’ve been through. That’s who I am, and I don’t want you to think you can change it.”

Archie soaks that information in and nods, but he doesn’t really agree with what Gold is saying, and he can tell by the expression on Gold’s face that he knows.

“ _ Additionally _ ,” Gold says, his tone even firmer now, “you are not my therapist. If you want to be in a relationship with me --  _ still _ , after last night -- then that’s your choice, but it will be a  _ relationship _ . Not therapy. I don’t feel any need to be fixed, and it’s not your place to try. If at some point both of us decide I  _ do _ need help of some sort, then it will be with someone of my choosing, not with you. Understand?”

“Of course,” Archie says. Gold scrutinizes him a moment longer, looking to see if what he’s said has truly been absorbed. Seemingly satisfied, he looks away, and then he starts turning his mug of coffee in circles, suddenly awkward, suddenly unable to meet Archie’s eyes.

“That being said,” says Gold, staring at the wall to the left of Archie’s head, “I’d like to apologize … for last night. It’s not your job to …” He clears his throat, cheeks flushing a light pink. “You know, to comfort me. And that’s why I tried to send you away, so we wouldn’t cross that boundary. But, well …” He gazes down into his coffee, looking almost miserable. “We both see how well that went.”

There’s a beat of silence. Archie shifts forward in his chair, head tilted.

“Gold?” he says. “You, uh, you know that’s not really crossing a boundary, right?”

Gold looks up at him sharply and Archie stutters a bit.

“I-I mean, people -- people comfort each other all the time. Even people who aren’t in relationships. It’s what you do when someone’s crying. You give them a hug, or ask them what’s wrong -- that’s not something that’s restricted to -- to people in therapy, Gold. It’s normal human relations.”

Gold doesn’t seem to take that information to heart. “Regardless,” he says, “it was a line I shouldn’t have crossed, and I’m sorry for that.”

Archie sits back and tries to think of a way to counter this (again), but nothing he can think of seems like it’ll work. “OK,” he says instead. “Apology accepted. But I think you have a listening problem.”

Gold ignores him. “Sheriff Swan is looking into my blackmail problem,” he says over the rim of his coffee cup. “She … has promised to call with more details, should she find them.”

“Well, that’s good,” Archie says. He can think of hundreds of people, easily, who would  _ want _ to blackmail Gold, but there are none he can think of who would have access to pictures like that. He imagines that the original photos were taken in a basement somewhere, overseas, in the '60s, and it’s hard to picture how they’d end up over here. But for all he knows, that stuff is just one Google search away.

“Were there ever any court cases,” Archie asks, “about the -- uh, the --”

Gold refuses to help him out. He pretends to have suddenly gone deaf.

“The molestation?” Archie finishes, his mouth dry. He has barely finished speaking when Gold snaps, “No.”

“No court cases at  _ all _ ?” Archie checks.

“We covered this yesterday,” Gold reminds him harshly, “in case you weren’t listening.”

Archie bites back the first response that pops into his head:  _ You barely told us  _ anything _ yesterday _ . And he’s had so much to process that he can hardly remember what few details they  _ did _ learn. He went to bed last night with a headache caused by tears and confusion, muddling through everything at a snail’s pace. He kept fixating on the last time he tried to have sex with Gold, the alien look on Gold’s face when he grabbed Archie’s wrist and stopped him, skin cold, chest heaving from something other than arousal.

Archie hadn’t been able to place that look until last night. It wasn’t something he had ever faced in real life, not aimed at him. He wasn’t even sure if there was a single word for it -- it was the emotional equivalent of a flinch, something vulnerable and guarded all at once. A protective measure that tells more than it’s meant to.

Gold’s voice cuts through his thoughts like a saw.

“There was supposed to be a trial for some offense or another,” he says brusquely, seeming intensely focused on his coffee, and not on Archie. “When I was ten … maybe eleven, I’m not sure … the police came, and I know they -- they were after something. But I can’t know for sure it was  _ that _ .”

Archie says nothing; he stares at Gold and waits, inviting a response.

“They could have had a warrant for anything,” Gold says, though he doesn’t look convinced; he shrugs, too late and too jerkily for it to be a natural motion. “It doesn’t matter. My -- he took me as far as the bridge out of town and left me. So I don’t know. No one ever asked me to testify about anything, not even small things, so I imagine--”

He cuts himself off and pretends to sip from a cup of coffee that Archie knows damn well is empty by now.

“Who left you?” Archie asks. He sees a troubled look pass over Gold’s face. “Was it the guy who took the photos -- or woman, it could be--”

“Yes,” says Gold. He places his mug down carefully and folds his hands. It’s a small gesture that makes him look ten times stonier. “The photographer.”

“Was there just one?” Archie asks, pressing his luck. “Because in some of the photos--”

“You talk too much,” Gold says coldly. Archie starts to say something and thinks better of it; he can feel himself flushing, knowing too well that he pushed for information, knowing even better that pushing is the last thing you should do.

“Well, thank you for telling me,” he says. The words sound soft and meek; for a moment, Gold appears more distressed than assuaged by them.

“It’s … fine. Don’t thank me.”

“Why not?” says Archie, though he knows.

Gold pushes away from the table and turns around sharply, on the pretense of rinsing out his coffee mug. He keeps his back to Archie for upward of five minutes, washing the cup by hand. Archie lets one of those minutes pass in silence.

“I’m thanking you because it’s very brave of you to tell me these things,” he says. Gold’s irritation is almost tangible, tinged with a sort of nervous energy that Archie is all too familiar with. “You don’t  _ have _ to tell me, but you decided to anyway, and that’s … well, it’s commendable. It shows strength.”

Gold gives an uncharacteristically loud sigh of exasperation. He still doesn’t turn around, though he does shoot Archie a glare when the man moves closer.

“I’m proud of you,” Archie says, not quite daring to put a hand on Gold’s shoulder. He remembers days when that exact action elicited nothing but wrath. He remembers days when they could kiss and touch like nothing was wrong.

He can’t remember Gold ever getting to a state of arousal. He’d always ignored it, pretended not to notice, decided it wasn’t worth thinking about. So many missed signs -- Archie thinks of a new one every minute and adds it to the ever-growing list.

“ _ Proud _ ,” Gold scoffs, his voice barely audible. He glares at the mug he’s washing; he doesn’t seem to notice the water and soap splashing onto his sleeves. After a moment, Archie reaches forward and turns the faucet off, pretending not to see Gold flinch at their brief proximity. He plucks the cup from Gold’s fingers and sets it in the drainer.

“I  _ am _ proud,” Archie says. “When you stop thinking of yourself as inherently bad, you will be, too. You’ve got a lot to be proud of.”

Gold glares down at the empty sink, unresponsive. He clutches at the countertop, knuckles turning white; he doesn’t look up when Archie finally moves away, and he doesn’t turn around until he’s certain Archie has left the room for good, heading off to work with a few whispered words -- probably “I love you,” maybe a reminder that today is rent day, but the blood in Gold’s head is rushing too fast for him to hear.

He sits down heavily at the kitchen table, his breath leaving him.

When Sheriff Swan fills out her files about the blackmail, she’ll probably refer to the young boy depicted as a sex worker, or a child prostitute. Maybe even a sex slave. Gold thinks about that, his fingers clenching and unclenching spasmodically.

He can remember being seven years old and going into a hotel room with a man he didn’t know. When he saw those men, he remembered vividly, he was supposed to say, “Dad, I’ve been looking all over for you!” It stopped any nosy passersby from interfering -- they might have their suspicions, but that was never enough to warrant confronting a stranger about his paternity.

Dad never called him a prostitute or sex worker. 

Dad called him a rent boy.

Funny how that word has followed him so thoroughly into adulthood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I read in a book called The Lolita Effect that child sex slaves (in the States, at least) are taught to call their "customers" Dad or Daddy when meeting in a public space, to alleviate suspicion from passersby; since I included that idea for this fic I thought I should say where I learned it from. The Lolita Effect is by M. Gigi Durham; it's about the sexualization of young girls/teens in the media and I definitely recommend it, it's very eye-opening. Though it's probably more eye-opening for dudes, since we're more removed from the feminine experience. For women or DFAB folks the "revelations" in the book might seem kind of obvious, idk
> 
> Anyway that's my random book review


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